| dc.description.abstract | This study draws on discussions of post-millennial literary fiction to investigate the emerging body of critical theory about the passing of postmodernism and the formulation of what comes after, designated "metamodernism". The aim is to identify and map the underlying structure of intersections and interrelations between the different theories and ideas in order to provide an approximation of the shape that metamodernism is taking.
This study investigates metamodernism's origins in terms of critical theory and situates it in relation to postmodernism and modernism. The failure, absorption, and rejection of postmodernism gave rise to metamodernism, which draws on renewed modernist notions to counter the failings of postmodernism. As a continuation of both postmodernism and modernism, metamodernism is situated both between and beyond its critical predecessors.
The emergence of metamodernism in cultural products is traced in a range of post-millennial literary works and studies of literary works. Four recent novels that respond to the ethical imperative of metamodernism provide an in-depth perspective on the aspects of metamodernism: A tale for the time being (Ruth Ozeki, 2013); A brief history of seven killings (Marlon James, 2014); Buys (Willem Anker, 2014) and The Sympathizer (Viet Thanh Nguyen, 2015).
A network of interrelated aspects constituting metamodernism is identified in post-millennial fiction. These aspects respond to the perceived deficiencies of postmodernism, and include renewed notions of affect, authenticity, myth, optimism, realism, and sincerity. They are centred around and give rise to affective structures of intersubjectivity, and are founded on and respond to a strongly defined ethical imperative — showing that metamodernism operates on an intersection between ethical concerns, ontology, and (inter)subjectivity.
Three bodies of theory recently developed in the humanities and social sciences that express the central theoretical impulses of metamodernism. Affect theories, chaos and complexity theory, and posthumanism are characterised by a renewed emphasis on ontology, a relational understanding of subjectivity, and the formulation of both ontology and subjectivity to respond to an ethical imperative.
The emphasis on affective processes and interconnected (inter)subjectivity indicates a relational understanding of being as the basic theoretical tenet of metamodernism, that which animates its ethical imperative and gives rise to its renewed focus on ontology. On a metamethodological level, relationality acts as the underlying organising principle of metamodernism, and highlights the interconnectedness of its different theoretical aspects.
The structure of this study attempts to express the information relationally, both to preserve the integrity of metamodernist theories that reject linear, hierarchical epistemological frameworks and to reflect the function of relationality as organising principle of metamodernism | en_US |
